The film was the famous thriller of the last century, and it also swept the Oscars in '92. Regarding the analysis and criticism of this film, there are already too many online works and many excellent works. This look and feel is only a record made after watching the movie and Dai Jinhua's film class.
The skeleton on the butterfly is a painting by Dalí and consists of three
FBI trainee Agent Clarice is suddenly called to see Professor Crawford, a professor she desperately wants to throw herself into. Professor Crawford is investigating the serial perverted homicide criminal "Bison Bill" and entrusts Clarice to go to the prison to meet another famous murderer, "Hannibal", hoping to find clues to solve the case. According to the clues given by Hannibal, Clarice successfully found "Buffalo Bill". But Hannibal also escaped in the process of helping to solve the case.
1. The Screaming Lamb
When Professor Hannibal presses Clarice about the biggest shadow of her childhood, Clarice tells the story of the screaming lamb. In the story, she is sent to the house of her aunt who owns a ranch after her father's death, and in the middle of the night she hears screams and goes out to check. She noticed that it was the sound of the lambs to be slaughtered, so she opened the fence door, hoping that the lambs would escape on their own. Unexpectedly, the panicked lambs, though screaming, stayed where they were and did not escape.
When I listened to this story, I always felt that the lamb was like many real-life situations. For example, people who have been subjected to violence for many years, although they are afraid of the perpetrators, but if they are really given the opportunity to escape, some people will still choose to stay. This is still a more obvious scene, and more scenes may be that we are trapped in it without knowing it, and we will not seize the opportunity when someone rescues us.
If this is a metaphor, we may need to wonder if we are lambs who do not know how to escape.
Second, desire comes from everyday life
Clarice has never been able to understand the motives of "Buffalo Bill", why did he peel a layer of skin on each victim? Professor Hannibal's answer is simple: the motive for sin comes from desire, which is aroused by the things that are most frequently touched every day.
I remember when I went on a tour before, my companions always encouraged everyone to go shopping. Asked if he had anything he wanted to buy, his answer was, "The demand is all out." Take a stroll and you'll find what you're looking for. ”
Speaking of which, this advertisement and the overwhelming promotion of soft text on the Internet are the same reason. Originally, you have no desires and no needs, but when something keeps appearing in front of your eyes, you will unconsciously have a desire for it.
Third, about women
(1) Why Clarice
The beauty of Judy Foster
When Professor Crawford first met Clarice, he told her of a false task to study "Hannibal, who eats men." But why pick a female student who has not yet become an official FBI agent, Professor Crawford said that Clarice is excellent, and not the official FBI can reduce Professor Hannibal's defensiveness.
In fact, when Clarice arrived at the prison, Dr. Zitton said that Professor Hannibal had been on the highest security and had not seen a woman for eight years. After Mr. Dai Jinhua reminded me, I noticed that Professor Crawford did not value Clarice's excellence and ability, but her youth and beauty.
In retrospect, when Dr. Zitton first met her, when the entomologists at the museum first met her, they all meant to flirt with her. Professor Hannibal had asked her if Professor Crawford had flirted with her. It seems that every male character wears "colored" glasses when they see Clarice.
(2) The status of women in the environment at that time
There are several sets of shots in the film that I personally remembered.
Male gaze
One is that Clarice took the elevator when she went to see Professor Crawford, which was already full of several tall men, and when Clarice entered, they all looked at her;
Second, when Clarice and Professor Crawford go to see the newly discovered victim, Professor Crawford enters the room with the local sheriff on the grounds that the details are not suitable for public description, and Clarisse is surrounded by local male police officers, who are also always observing her;
Third, when they planned to examine the victim's remains, Clarice asked the male police officers who were surrounding to leave the room.
Women were probably relatively rare at the time, especially in institutions like the FBI. Perhaps the long-standing gender bias has led people to naturally believe that women are inferior to men. In books such as "Dissenting Moments" and "Her World" that I read this year, we can also see that the status of women in that era was even lower than today, and it was more difficult to be recognized in the workplace than it is today.
(3) Is this a movie featuring women?
It is said to be the first film in Hollywood history to unfold a story with women as the main actors. So is this a movie with a female protagonist?
Teacher Dai Jinhua mentioned that in the film with male actors as the protagonists, we can see that the growth and transformation of the male protagonists are completed by their own strength. In films featuring female actors, there is often an authoritative presence behind the heroine guiding her, and this authoritative presence is often one or several men.
A closer look at the poster of the movie "The Silence of the Lambs" can also see this. Although the most commonly used is a frontal photo of a butterfly on the heroine's mouth, there are actually several different versions of the film's posters. In these posters, Clarice is in front, and Both Professor Clover and Professor Hannibal are standing behind her.
Another version of the poster
Another basis that can be used to judge is the shooting method. Teacher Dai Jinhua mentioned in the preface that the art of film was developed with men as the protagonists. That is to say, men are the viewer, whether it is the line of sight in the movie or the line of sight behind the camera, while women are placed in the position of the viewer for a long time. Generally speaking, the viewer is the actor and is conscious; the viewer is only the object, the object of action of the viewing. And the cut-off shots in movies are often not looking at the shots.
It is also very simple to judge who is the viewer, from the perspective of shooting techniques, the viewer's perspective is generally promising. For example, in the classic dialogue between two people across the glass in this movie, Clarice is completely illuminated by the light, while Hannibal is hidden in the dark. Hannibal's shots are without a foreground, while Clarice's shots are all foreground.
It is said that Anthony Hopkins contributed perfect acting skills in the film, winning the Oscar for Best Actor in just 16 minutes. Instead, I think he's the first protagonist of the film, Professor Hannibal has carried through the film, and Clarice is just the executor of his actions.